I took a photo of The International Educator newsletter page featuring my brother, Andy. He is in the top row, far left of the photo. Andy is one of the new hires at the Cotopaxi American International School in Quito, Ecuador. He is teaching chemistry in the high school. Congratulations!
This is Andy’s third international posting. Last year he taught at the prestigious, Escuela Anaco, in Anaco, Venezuela and previous to that, he worked as a science teacher in the Peace Corps in Malawi, Africa.
TIE goes out to almost every international school in the world. It is read by all international teachers and can be found in every teachers lounge. It is also used to advertise for open positions.
We had a busy weekend as our school ISB, hosted the CEESA Boys’ Soccer Championship. Part of the weekend is our families billeting the visiting players. We hosted two fine young gentlemen from the Anglo American School of Sofia, Bulgaria. Shown above is Lubo Zhelehanov with our children. The boys loved having a real soccer player in the house! We also hosted Darren Bonev (shown below with Ocean) another “Wolf” from Bulgaria.
Both young men were very well behaved all weekend and it was enjoyable getting to know them. It is a reflection on their families and school. It was a really nice weekend and a positive experience for our community. I hope we can do more of these in the future.
After talking with ISB parent, Vlade Divac at Parent-Teacher Conferences on Tuesday, I learned that the Adriatic Basketball League is sort of a minor basketball league. He follows the Euroleague Basketball
The Official Logo of the Euroleague Basketball
The league consists of 24 teams from around Europe. The teams each year are selected by the ULEB, a consortium of professional basketball leagues. The teams are selected on their performances in recent domestic leagues and contracts with ULEB. There are three teams from the Adriatic Basketball Association that Serbian teams play in. There is one team from Croatia, one from Slovenia, and two-time defending league champion, Partizan of Belgrade, Serbia.
The Euroleague Basketball has a strange format of play. The 24 teams are placed into 4 groups of 6 teams. Each group plays a round-robin schedule of 10 games. Partizan is in Group D along with teams from Moscow, Madrid, Athens, Milan, and Istanbul. This stage is from October 22 – January 15.
The top two teams in each group moves on to the next round of 16 teams, appropriately called, The Top 16..The 16 teams are put into 4 groups of 4. Once again there is a home and home round robin format so each team plays 6 games. This stage is from January 28 to March 12.
The top two teams in each group advances to the Quarterfinal Playoffs. First place teams are matched with second place teams. Each pair plays a best of five series.
The winners of each quarterfinal series advance to the Final Four. The final four is the same as the NCAA Final Four, in that it is a knockout round.
In summary, it goes from 24 to 16 to 8 to 4, and then a champion. A team that wins the league, could play 21 to 23 games.
The Serbian representative, Partizan, last year made it to the Quarterfinal Playoffs. This year they are second in their group with a 2-1 record. Below is their first round schedule.
Shown above is my friend Ethan in an US Embassy-issued Uncle Sam outfit. We had an enjoyable night at the Ambassador’s party for election night. We only stayed until around 1:00 AM as the very first results were coming in (Kentucky & Vermont). It was a school night so we couldn’t stay longer. We found a sitter earlier in the evening.
As I posted earlier, the vote at the party was a landslide. My real vote, absentee I did in my home county of Iron in the state of Michigan helped Obama win by 133 votes. The final tally in Iron County was 3,080 – 2,947. An amazing 7 counties in my region of Michigan, the Upper Peninsula, went for Obama this time, finally making Michigan, truly a blue state.
I met the Ambassador, Cameron Munter, who is a nice guy. The Prince of Serbia was there, as well as some other big wigs in the country. We laughed and had a great time. I awoke to hear Obama’s speech, wonderful! He made me proud to be an American. I really hope that this will move all of us to be better people and begin again to be a beacon for the world for individual freedoms and excellence.
Kirsten, Janna, & Nadia With the B92 Cameras
Serbian President Tadić had these things to say:
“Your election paves the way for opening a new chapter in the long history of relations between Serbia and the United States, during most of which we have been allies and friends,” the Serbian president’s message read, Beta reported.
In his words, Serbia is staunchly determined to improve bilateral relations with the U.S, while contributing to stability and the European future of the Balkans.
Tadić added that he hoped the new American policy would demonstrate more understanding for Serbia, which is defending its legitimate interests in a peaceful and diplomatic way.
I am blogging live from the Ambassador’s party at the Sava Center in Belgrade, Serbia. There is around 500 people at the party and there are TV’s tuned to CNN and plenty to drink and eat. They did a vote of party attendees and Obama won 313 – 41. This was expected as it is a very cosmopolitian, liberal crowd of American expats, diplomats from everywhere, and important Serbs. Time to go, photos coming soon.
It was an absolutely gorgeous day in Belgrade yesterday. We all wore t-shirts and shorts as temperatures were near 80F. The family took advantage of the warmth and we went for a run around Ada Lake. It took Nadia 38 minutes as I trailed with the bike stroller and Owen rode his bike, on the 7 kilometers trail. As you can see above, Ollie fell asleep as well as Ocean did too.
In the afternoon we carved pumpkins and ate roast chicken outside. Sunday night was the usual, clean the house, bathe the children, and we played UNO (Owen won twice). Then it was a movie and to bed.
Ollie and Ocean are shown above playing in the leaves in our yard. I did a bit of yard work Saturday morning and the kids had fun. The weather yesterday was in the high 70’s and it felt like summer again. I also swept the steps of leaves and debris, changes multiple lights around the house, and generally cleaned up. In the early morning we went to Merkator for our bi-weekly shopping trip and spent $290 on groceries.
In the afternoon I went to school to meet with our DP Coordinator Liz and we worked a bit on next semester’s schedule. After that I came home and prepared the kids for the baby sitter. Yes, Nadia and I went out on a date!!! We are celebrating the anniversary of when we fell in love. On Halloween weekend in 1997, we began our relationship and have been with each other ever since. Ollie’s teacher assistant, Jelena, came and watched the kids. It was perfect. We went to Duomo, and upscale Italian restaurant in the Dorcol suburb of Belgrade. Excellent salads, pasta, and pizza, and a nice atmosphere. Nadia and I shared a bottle of wine and came home around 9:30 PM. A rare night out for us, but we plan to do this more often. With three young children, most of the time we are devoted to them and our relationship has been lost in the maelstrom of work and kids.
Happy Anniversary Baby, I hope we have many more!
Wine Note- The wine was a red named “Adega de Pegoes” which is produced by a Agriculture Coop in Portugal. The vintage was 2007 but I didn’t get the grape variety. Excellent
The Adriatic Basketball League (NBL is a bank that is the league sponsor) is a regional league consisting of 14 teams from the countries of the ex-Yugoslavia. After the bitterness and violence of the seccesionist wars of the 1990’s, it is surprising this league exists. I guess it must be a testament to the power of sports to transcend these things.
All of the countries have their own regular professional leagues, and the NBL is a “Champions League” type of format. The 14 teams play each other home and away for a 28 game regular season. Serbia has 5 of the 14 teams. The two big sport clubs in Belgrade, Red Star and Partizan are represented along with FMP from the Belgrade suburb of Zelenik, Hemofarm, from the city of Vrsac near the Romanian border, and Vojvodina “Serbia Gas” from Serbia’s second city of Novi Sad. Croatia has four teams, Slovenia three teams, and one each from Bosnia and Montenegro.
The league started in the 2001-2002 season and the number of teams has varied through the seven seasons. For one season, Israeli team Maccabi Tel Aviv was a member of the league. The champion of the first season was a team from Slovenia, and the second year was the Croatian team Zadar. The last 5 seasons, Serbian teams were crowned champions. Zelenik won twice, Hemofarm once, and the past two seasons the champion was Partizan, who also won the Serbian Soccer League last year.
This year they have played six games each and once again, Partizan is atop the league at 6-0. Red Star is second with a 5-1 record. The league starts in October and ends in April. Red Star American players are Andre Owens, the 6-4 guard from Indiana University played to brief seasons in the NBA and Lawrence Roberts, ex-Mississippi State star and Memphis Grizzly player. The 6-9 power forward played the last two seasons in the Greek league and is new to Red Star. Partizan features ex-UMass star Stephane Lasme, who played briefly with the Miami Heat.
I haven’t been to a game yet, but plan to. The league website is quite good.
Last night we enjoyed the ISB Halloween Festival at the school. The weather was quite nice and the kids really had fun. We took the photo above on the way home in front of a spooky gate. Belgrade is full of “haunted houses” and has a perfect atmosphere for halloween. The boys and Ocean went trick or treating around the classrooms, and Owen participated in the costume parade. I couldn’t get Ollie to go with his class. He would rather play in the park and his teacher was dressed as The Cat in the Hat and it freaked him out. All three kids liked best the Arts & Craft station where they did worksheets and put stickers on mini pumpkins. Ocean crawled under the tables while they were doing that. Our costumes were repeats from previous years. Owen was superman, Ocean was Yoda, Ollie was Woody, Nadia was Le Chef, and I was a fair dinkum Aussie. Next year we will go with a family theme and plan for the evening. Now that we are not in the tropics, there is a possiblity of cold weather, but last night it was beautifullly warm, as it has been most of the month of October. The only thing I didn’t like about the festival was it was too crowded.
Nadia's Kinder Class
We had a good week. I am feeling more comfortable at work with a quarter under my belt. We are getting our car on Monday!!! It has been a bit of a hassle with taxis and I am itching to explore Serbia outside of Belgrade. I got out of going to the Paris MYP conference as we are hosting a CEESA boys soccer championship, as well as a visit from the architect designing the new middle school, etc. Parent-Teacher conferences are also on Tuesday and we have no classes.
Oliver was a brave little guy again and got out his stitches. He will probably have a slight scar between his eyes. You can click on the flickr account to see the rest of the festival pictures. International schools love Halloween because no other country has the holiday and it is a good idea.
I just got back from a Principal – Parent Coffee session. Every month I meet with parents. It is nice to get a chance to hear from them.
It was surprisingly warm today. We woke up and it was raining, but the day turned out to be quite nice. Serbia moved their clocks back this weekend and we really notice the time change. It gets dark before 5:00 PM which much different for us. I took this photo of Nadia and Oliver yesterday on the way to school. Nadia was looking particularly beautiful that morning.
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